|
______________
⁷ https://literariness.org/2020/07/06/analysis-of-john-drydens-absalom-and-achitophel/
Does the preponderance of prose and satire confirm Eliot’s early charge that a “dissociation of sensibility” had set in by the time of the Restoration? Is it true that writers no longer could fuse thought and feeling, with the consequence that prose was used for conveying truth and poetry for the setting forth of delightful lies?
Hobbes, who had little use for poetry in general, praised the epic as conducive to moral truth, and he admitted that satire can be defended on moral grounds also. The Restoration poets in England were the successors of a classical tradition that emphasized the ethical value of poetry, so they might as plausibly be considered carrying out, on a somewhat larger scale, the dictates of Jonson as those of Hobbes. The Royal Society of London, of which Dryden was a member, was founded in 1662 for “the improving of natural knowledge,” and among its ambitions it numbered the improving of the language by waging war against “tropes” and “figures” and “metaphors.” One cannot imagine Donne having any-thing to do with such an organization, all the more because the Society on principle did not discuss “such subjects as God and the soul.” It is difficult to see how Dryden’s association with it substantiates the charge of dissociated sensibility, however, for there is certainly both thought and feeling together in Absalom and Achitophel, even if it is, like the Royal Society itself, earthbound and relatively unmetaphorical, and, while it is no doubt instructive, generations of readers have taken delight in it also.
One is tempted to offer a different explanation for Restoration writers’ greater attachment to prose and to satire. The reading audience expanded greatly in the seventeenth century, and increasingly it became the business of the writer to satisfy its interests, which for a variety of reasons were political and social. The early Metaphysical writers possessed a very small audience (one another and a few more who shared the same interests); very much the same situation obtained for Jonson and his followers. When the readership increased, poets modified their work accordingly. When Dryden did write of religion, he wrote of it as he and his contemporaries understood it. That Dryden took little delight in Donne’s poetry is clear from his remarks in “A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire” (1693):
Donne affects the metaphysics, not only in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts and entertain them with the softnesses of love.
Dryden did not understand Donne’s intentions very well, but he understood his own political intentions very well indeed.
In his own and the century’s final years, Dryden worked primarily at translation, promising in his “Preface to Fables Ancient and Modern” (1700), “if it should please God to give me longer life and moderate health.” He added another provision: “that I meet with those encouragements from the public, which may enable me to proceed in my undertaking with some cheerfulness.” This is the remark of a public figure—a former poet laureate, author of a stream of plays and published books since the 1600’s, a veteran attraction at Will’s Coffee House in London.
Poets had not always expected such encouragements. When Donne died in 1631, only four of his poems had been published. Herbert, Marvell, and Traherne saw few or none of their poems in print. Jonson, on the other hand, had offered his work to the public, even inviting ridicule in 1616 by boldly calling his volume Works. Like Dryden after him, he had developed a healthy sense of audience in his career as a playwright. He had even more reason to fear an unhappy audience than Dryden, for along with John Marston and George Chapman, he had been imprisoned and very nearly mutilated by a gang of Scots retainers of James I whom the trio had outraged by some of their jests in their play Eastward Ho! (pr., pb. 1605). Nevertheless, Jonson promised a translation of Horace’s Ars poetica (c. 17 b.c.e.; The Art of Poetry), with no provisions whatsoever, that same year. The fact that he did not deliver the translation until long afterward does not seem to have had anything to do with readers’ wishes. Jonson usually conveyed the impression that whatever he had to say amounted to nothing less than a golden opportunity for any sensible reader or listener.
Even if one assumes that Dryden’s hope for encouragement may have been only an expression of politeness, that politeness itself signifies a change of relationship with the “public.” Most of the poetry written in the time of Donne and Jonson has the quality of being overheard. It is as if the poet is praying, making love, or rebuking a fool, and the reader has just happened to pass by. If the poem is a verse epistle, the reader experiences the uncomfortable feeling that he is reading someone else’s mail—and quite often that is so. By 1700, the poet seems conscious of producing a document for public inspection and proceeds accordingly, with all the implications—fortunate and unfortunate—of such a procedure. He will not tax the public with too many difficulties, for some of them—too many, perhaps—will not understand. He had better polish his work, and he had better not be dull. He might produce one of those “overheard” lyrics once in a while, but the chances are that they will yield few excellences not imitative of earlier poets whose circumstances favored that type of poem.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
